DeepSeek’s A.I. Chatbot Awkwardly Navigates China’s Censors
Asia Pacific|How Does DeepSeek’s A.I. Chatbot Navigate China’s Censors? Awkwardly.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/29/world/asia/deepseek-china-censorship.html
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Asked about sensitive topics, the bot would begin to answer, then stop and delete its own work. It refused to answer questions like: “Who is Xi Jinping?”
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By Vivian Wang
Vivian Wang, reporting from behind the Great Firewall, had an intriguing conversation with DeepSeek’s chatbot.
As the world scrambles to understand DeepSeek — its sophistication, its implications for the global A.I. arms race — one natural question has arisen: Given that it is made by a Chinese company, how is it dealing with Chinese censorship?
I decided to test it out.
I’m based in China, and I registered for DeepSeek’s A.I. chatbot with a Chinese phone number, on a Chinese internet connection — meaning that I would be subject to China’s Great Firewall, which blocks websites like Google, Facebook and The New York Times.
The results of my conversation surprised me. In some ways, DeepSeek was far less censored than most Chinese platforms, offering answers with keywords that would often be quickly scrubbed on domestic social media.
Other times, the program eventually censored itself. But because of its “thinking” feature, in which the program reasons through its answer before giving it, you could still get effectively the same information that you’d get outside the Great Firewall — as long as you were paying attention, before DeepSeek deleted its own answers.
In other ways, though, it mirrored the general experience of surfing the web in China. Some words were taboo. And DeepSeek’s developers seem to be racing to patch holes in the censorship. (DeepSeek could not immediately be reached for comment.)
I also tested the same questions while using software to circumvent the firewall, and the answers were largely the same, suggesting that users abroad were getting the same experience. Until now, China’s censored internet has largely affected only Chinese users. But if DeepSeek gains a major foothold overseas, it could help spread Beijing’s favored narrative worldwide.